When the Levee Breaks
by crazybeagle
Summary: He wasn't scratching the wall. The wall was scratching him. Clawing at him, more like. Tearing at him. Wearing him down. Set after "Appointment in Samarra."


_**When the Levee Breaks**_

**Set after "Appointment in Samarra." This story is my attempt to stave off the insanity I'm suffering not knowing what's going to happen. But I do warn you, this isn't exactly cheerful…So angst ahoy.**

Loud.

Everything was dark, jumbled, confusing, and _loud. _

He couldn't put a finger on _why _everything was so loud, that moment he first woke up, and he couldn't even say if it was actual noise that he was hearing, or a bunch of garbled static emitting from somewhere in the space between his ringing ears. But it was loud, alright.

Somewhere, though, faint amidst the ringing and buzzing and humming of whatever the hell it was that was filling up his head, someone was calling out to him.

Dean. That was Dean.

And that right there was his lifeline, grounding him long enough to stave off the sea of _loud _washing over him and to bring him back to the here-and-now. He forced his eyes open. And though the loud didn't go away, he became aware of several things all at once. The first, and the one that jarred him fully back into awareness, was pain. Everything, _everything _hurt like a mother…his chest, and oh God, his _head…_but then again that might have something to do with the loud. His mind hazily noted that the raw stinging in his wrists and ankles bespoke restraint.

He was lying down—tied to a table? Not a good sign. Well, more comfortable than a table, now that he thought about it. A bed, maybe. Then why was he restrained?

And cold, too. He was cold. His shirt felt soaked through with sweat, but he was freezing, his entire body trembling. Odd.

Loud, loud, _loud…_

He screwed his eyes shut.

"Sammy?"

Oh, right. Dean.

He made himself open his eyes, but they were sensitive even to the dim, grayish light, and his head throbbed sickeningly.

He felt Dean's hands on his face, his chest, his shoulders, trying to rouse him, and checking for injury, maybe…? What the hell had happened, anyway?

And then Dean was talking again. Sam only caught snatches of it over the roaring in his ears.

"—please—okay? Come on—man, wake up—hey—you with me? Sam?"

_Yeah. Sort of. _He wasn't sure if he spoke this answer aloud or not, so he tried again. But absolutely nothing came out. So he opted to just nod instead, wincing as the movement made his head throb with blinding force.

"Sammy? Thank God…" Dean's voice was tentative but giddy with relief. "It's really you, right?"

He nodded again, the movement minimal this time. Of course it was him, why wouldn't it be. What was going _on_? Damn, he wanted to throw up…

"It…worked, then?"

Did _what _work?

Dean frowned when he didn't say anything. Or at least, that's what he thought he saw on the worried face that faded in and out of his vision. So he tried to say something.

Which turned out to be a bad idea. "Wha—" he started, and then broke off with a few hard, dry coughs. God, his throat felt like it'd been rubbed down with sandpaper, and a shooting pain radiated from his chest and his lungs. His eyes watered. He would've curled in on himself but for the fact that he was chained down. …_Why _was he chained down?

"Whoa, hey, okay, okay, easy, you're okay…" Dean was muttering, gripping his shoulders until the coughing and shuddering subsided. "You hurting?"

Another nod.

"'Kay. We can fix that. But let's get you outta here, alright?"

_Where's "here"?_

And pain notwithstanding, that was one question that needed asking. He managed something along the lines of "…'S goin' on?" in a hoarse whisper.

Dean paused in the middle of freeing Sam's left hand from the cuffs and looked up, obviously surprised. "You don't remember?"

"'member…what…?" Another cough. Come to think of it, when he reached back with his mind, he couldn't for the life of him remember…hell, he couldn't even remember what the last thing he remembered was. Of course, the loud probably didn't help with that.

Speaking of the loud, it was flaring up again, as if fueled by his confusion and disorientation.

Dean was saying something, presumably in response to his question, but the loud was making it _really_ hard to focus. "…huh?"

"I said, don't worry about it for right now, okay?"

"B-but—"

"Sam, _please_." He sounded weirdly…frantic about something. Huh. Well, it wasn't like situations that involved people waking up and finding themselves handcuffed to something usually warranted a _non_-frantic reaction. "Just don't…just don't think about it, okay? Don't _try_ to think about it." His eyes softened. "Look, you're okay. That's what matters right now. What happened isn't important, trust me."

"…talk later?"

He hesitated. "Yeah, Sammy. We'll talk about it later."

It was days before things started coming back to him at all. It was over a week before he regained the stamina to even get out of bed. That day he'd first woken up, he remained aware of his surroundings only as long as it took Dean to help him sit up, quickly explain that they were at Bobby's, and this was the panic room, and for him to mutter a weary greeting to Bobby himself, who had apparently been in the room the entire time, watching the ordeal. But he passed out in Dean's arms seconds later, and slept for 48 hours straight.

So, two days after said passing out, he woke up late at night to find himself in a guest bedroom. He sat up, but gasped when the nasty throbbing that had apparently decided to take up residence in his head and chest all but knocked him right back down.

Either the sound woke Dean, or he'd been up anyway, but either way Dean was at his side in a heartbeat. By the looks of the old mattress and tangled sheets on the floor near the door, Dean had opted to share the room with him, even though one of the perks of staying with Bobby was the fact that he had enough space for them to each have their own room. Obviously he hadn't wanted to leave Sam alone while Sam was recovering from…whatever it was he was supposed to be recovering from right now.

_Loud…_

Somewhere between the pain and the resurfacing of confusion, the awful white noise crackled back into the forefront of his mind. But as it came, he realized that it hadn't really been gone at all, just an undercurrent to his thoughts. Maybe it'd been there the whole time he'd been asleep.

He put his head in his hands, trying to make it shut up.

"Sam? Sam, what's wrong?"

Sam shook his head, as if he could somehow dislodge the sound. "N-nothing." God, his voice sounded so terrible. Wrecked and weak. "Can I…uh, water?"

"Yeah. Be right back, dude."

"Thanks." He flopped back down onto the bed gratefully. "And I got some Advil in the top drawer of the dresser over there…"

Dean shot him a second's curious glance but nodded, got up, and crossed over to the dresser, and fished out a pill bottle. "These?"

"…Yeah." He grabbed for the bottle, even though there was no way in hell he'd be able to dry swallow right now, but then he stopped, holding the bottle and staring at it.

Wait a second…

How had he known where to find this? He'd surely stayed in this guest room before, but he couldn't remember how recently they'd even been to Bobby's. Not that he could remember much of anything, but still.

Silently telling the loud to shut the hell up so he could concentrate, he scanned the room. Yeah, it was a guest room, but it looked…distinctly lived-in. Not just lived-in, but lived-in by _him._ There was his open duffel on the dresser, a few of his shirts folded up on a table, his deodorant and toothbrush sitting on the dresser's edge. And…

There was one more thing. He didn't _know, _but he had a feeling. He flung half of himself off the edge of the bed to peer underneath it, and was grateful for Dean's lunging forward with a curse and grabbing the back of his shirt so he didn't fall when he was hit by a wave of nausea and vertigo at his sudden movement.

Sam tried and failed to push himself back up onto the bed, and let Dean pull him up.

"Sam, what the hell—" Dean started.

"I knew it," Sam muttered.

"Knew what?"

"Look." Sam held up the shotgun he'd found under the bed.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yes, it's a nice, shiny gun and all, Sammy, but not worth cracking your damn head open for."

Sam ignored him. "I remember…I remember putting it down there. Don't remember much else, but I remember that."

Loud loud loud loud loud loud _loud…_

Apparently the loud didn't approve of sudden vertigo, and was telling him so.

"Augh…"

"What's wrong? Sam?"

"Uh…" He was dazed. "…water?"

"Yeah. Okay." Dean glanced from him to the floor and back. "But lie down 'till I get back, okay? Don't want you to try and break your head while I'm gone." He paused. "Give me the gun too."

"Why…" What did he think he was going to do with it, anyway?

"Just do it."

He had no energy to argue. He handed over the gun and lay back down.

But by the time Dean came back, his brain seemingly started to put two and two together. Judging by the nasty shock waves this process was sending through his skull, he might just as well have broken his head. Faded images chased their way through his disjointed memory, and despite the pain and the loud, things slowly started to fall into place.

The second Dean walked through the door, Sam started questioning him, rapid-fire.

"How long have we been staying here?"

"Sam…"

"Answer me."

"Two days."

"What about _before_ I woke up in the panic room?"

Dean winced.

"Dean."

"Another couple days before that."

"Why were we here?"

"Sam, I really don't think—"

"You said we'd talk, Dean. So talk," he growled through gritted teeth. He needed the answers, now, before he lost focus again.

"You and Bobby hung out here for awhile and I went to go…take care of something."

"And why was I in the panic room?"

A _very_ long pause. He wouldn't meet Sam's eyes. "You and Bobby…kinda had a disagreement."

"A disagreement?" He scoffed. "About what?"

Dean looked at him for a second, and he handed over the water. "For once in your life, would it kill you to not ask questions? You know, let it go?"

"No, I'm not _letting it go_. Tell me what happened, Dean. Did I…did I get ahold of demon blood or something?" He didn't think he would've done something as stupid as that, but it sure would explain his feeling so holistically shitty right now, and the apparent memory gaps. He palmed some pills and swallowed them with some water.

"No. God, no. That'd have been…bad. _Really _bad."

"What, worse than usual?"

Dean said nothing.

"Then what was it?" He asked, frustration mounting. "Was it—" He stopped, blanching as a sudden, terrible thought came to him. "Was it something to do with Lucifer?"

"What? No, why would it have anything to do with…" He stared at Sam long and hard for a moment, and then said carefully, "No. Nothing to do with Lucifer."

"Lucifer's been taken care of already, hasn't he?" Sam asked slowly. He didn't know where the question came from, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he suddenly realized he was right. He didn't know how he knew it, and he couldn't remember how it'd happened, but somewhere inside him he felt certain he wasn't wrong about this.

Dean swallowed. "Yeah, Sammy. He has been."

"How?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Dean. How?"

"You," Dean said simply.

"Me? 'Me' what? What'd I do?" He pushed past the loud and sought to remember, no matter what Dean had told him. This mattered too much. He needed to know.

_The vessels…the Horsemen…the rings…loud loud loud loud LOUD…_

But then something clicked.

The Devil's Trap.

That he remembered.

"Oh," he said softly. "So I…"

"Yeah. You did."

"How long ago?"

Dean didn't answer.

"Dean, if you don't tell me, I'll just find out anyway."

"'Bout a year and a half."

"_What_?" he spluttered. "How…and—and how'd I even…" _Loud, loud, loud._ He shut his eyes. "Dean."

"Yeah."

"Gonna throw up."

"Okay." Dean dove for the wastebasket by the bed and shoved it into Sam's arms just in time.

Turned out there wasn't actually much to throw up, he'd been out for so long. Once that little bit was gone, it was mostly dry heaving.

Dean waited until he was done and then took the wastebasket from him. "You good?"

He nodded wearily and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "'M good."

_Oh yeah, sure, I'm good. I'm just fine. Mind telling me where the hell I've been for the past year and a half? _

"Here." Dean handed him the water bottle he'd grabbed from him.

Sam took it and drank a little. "How'd I get out?"

Yet again—and why was he surprised—Dean didn't answer.

"Dean…"

He looked Sam in the eye. "I don't know."

"You're lying." Aside from the fact that Dean had never been able to effectively lie to him, this was another thing that Sam just _knew._ "I bet I'll figure it out anyway, it's not like memory loss is often permanent."

"Yeah, and that's just the problem, isn't it," Dean muttered.

"What?"

"Crowley. Crowley did it, okay?"

"Crowley's dead," was Sam's automatic response. "Cas did it. Torched the bones, right?" Where the hell did _that _come from? Yet another thing he shouldn't have known but somehow did.

Dean blinked in surprise. "Yeah…yeah, he did."

Sam frowned. Something was nagging at him through all the noise. More disjointed images.

_An old brick prison…blood everywhere…something about Cas, a pizza man and a babysitter? What? …A Djinn, terrified out of her mind, behind locked bars…Sneaking through a long, dark corridor with Cas, Dean, and…Meg. Meg? What was Meg even doing there? Crowley. Something about Alphas. What was an Alpha again? And…and Samuel Campbell? _

Their grandfather? What the hell…?

But the images kept bombarding him. _Daylight. The Impala. Himself, stalking away angrily after telling Dean that it wasn't worth it, he didn't even want his soul back anymore._

His soul…

Oh.

_Oh._

Oh God.

"Sam?"

Sam shook his head vigorously. The slideshow of things he only half-remembered, things that didn't make any sense, memories that he supposed were his but felt more like patchy, half-remembered dreams forcibly cramming themselves into his consciousness.

And the loud was damn near unbearable.

But he'd worked out enough of it to know what was going on.

He looked up at Dean. "So…it's back, then?" he whispered.

"Yeah." Dean smiled faintly. "You're back."

"Good." And he passed out again.

By the time he felt well enough to be up and walking around, he'd remembered the all finer points of his stint of soullessness. And he was horrified. Not counting innocent lives he'd guiltlessly wasted during hunts, but he'd almost let Dean get killed, indirectly broken him and Lisa up, and…

And tried to _murder _Bobby.

The zillion "I'm so sorry"'s he'd uttered since remembering all this never seemed enough. It didn't matter to him that these memories didn't even feel like his own, because it was still _his _brain that had hatched these schemes, and logic and rationalization that were all his own had caused him to deliberately carry them out. So soul or not, the things that his mind alone was able to justify, the things he was _capable_ of, terrified him.

Dean forgave him in a heartbeat; Sam should've known he would. He'd dismissed all of Sam's insistences that it was at least in part his fault with, "It was a different guy, Sam. And that guy was _not _you." An easy grin. "Even if he did have your stupid hair."

Bobby said much the same—"It was just a whole lot of cold, connivin' nothing that was wearin' your meat suit, boy. Wasn't you." But his smile didn't reach his eyes as he said it, and Sam couldn't help but notice that Bobby was more wary and reserved than in his demeanor towards him, and gave him and Dean plenty of time alone. It wasn't as if he didn't deserve the cold shoulder from Bobby after what he'd done, but still… Dean told him to just give it time, and that Bobby was probably just waiting it out to make sure that the real Sam was back a hundred percent, and that all traces of psychopath-Sam were long gone. It was just plain old precaution ingrained into an old, season hunter was all, he said. Didn't make Sam feel any better about it.

They hardly even spoke of the "wall," aside from a few stern warnings from Dean not to mess with it, not to try to remember.

Well, it wasn't like Sam needed to be told twice.

But the problem was, the wall wouldn't leave _him _alone. Of course, that was assuming that the loud was the wall. What else could it be? The dense, oppressive static in his brain that would not leave him _alone._ Surely it made sense if something like that—an enormous, swirling mass of noise that only clouded and jumbled his thoughts—had a purpose, its purpose would be to hide memories that were even bigger and more destructive than that, or the loud was made up of the Hell-memories themselves, unreachable thanks to Death but still potent in their power to screw around with him.

And it only got worse as the days went on. His attention span got shorter as the loud grew stronger, and he started getting migraines the likes of which he hadn't seen since Azazel's visions, years ago. When Sam tried to explain the loud to him, Dean was angry at first, and attributed it to his "scratching the wall," when in fact the opposite as true. He wasn't scratching the wall. The wall was scratching _him. _

Clawing at him, more like. Tearing at him. Wearing him down.

But Sam didn't mention it anymore. Dean had freaking _become_ Death itself in order to bring back his soul, so the least he could do was not whine about it being uncomfortable.

He did an abysmal job hiding it, though. Especially when, mixed in with the loud, he started hearing voices.

It started with just his name. Voices, familiar voices like Dean's or Bobby's, whispering his name. That was easy enough to hide at first, though it was admittedly awkward for him to say "What?" when in fact nobody had spoken to him.

But then he started hearing Dad. Jess. Adam. Ellen. Jo. Pastor Jim. Pamela. Brady. Once or twice, Gabriel. Hell, even Mom. The voices were garbled, and aside from their familiarity, he couldn't for the life of him figure out what they were saying, but they sounded angry. And he kept hearing his name.

Either he was going nuts, or the wall was wearing thin.

He couldn't sleep. He could barely eat. The headaches and the loud were getting worse than ever. He didn't talk to Dean about it, but Dean, ever intuitive when it came to all things Sam Winchester, stuck to his side like glue. His worry was conveyed in little ways—always keeping a few Advil in his pocket, dragging his mattress right next to Sam's bed, bringing him food whenever he felt too awful to get up. And those sidelong glances he'd give him when he thought Sam wasn't looking—sadness, fear, and desperation written all over his face—were just about heartbreaking. So Sam figured that mentioning the voices would be a lousy way to repay him.

Of course, that didn't go according to plan. One night, about two weeks after he'd been resouled, he'd slept surprisingly well, the loud fading into the background, and woke up headache-free and _hungry_ for the first time in ages. Dean decided they'd celebrate by taking Sam out to breakfast.

When they were in the car, though, with the faint sounds of the radio filling the comfortable silence between them, everything fell apart.

"Sam," Dean said.

"Yeah?"

"You know what I think?"

"What?"

"That it was awful selfish of you."

"Uh…what was?" He stared out the window.

"To damn your girlfriend to Hell."

He blinked once or twice, stunned. "Wait…_what_?" He stared at the dashboard. What the hell…

"Don't play stupid, Sammy. What you are, what you've always _been_, you shouldn't have inflicted that on a total innocent like Jessica. Shouldn't have dragged her down with you."

He felt sick. "Dean, what—"

"Though to be perfectly honest," he said with a chuckle, "Maybe she just brought it on herself. She shoulda known better…shoulda spent more time on the weekends in church then in bed with the antichrist."

"Stop," he growled. "Dean, stop it. That's not funny."

"Yeah, actually, it's a little funny."

"Jess isn't in Hell."

"Oh, she isn't? What, can't you hear her? Just listen, Sammy."

"Wha—" But he cut off as screams, piercing, blood-chilling screams filled his ears.

He clamped his hands down over his ears and just about bent over double in his seat. "Shut up," he muttered. "No, shut up, shut _up_…"

The screams only got louder. But he wasn't sure anymore if it was Jess screaming or himself.

"Sam!" He felt hands shaking him.

"No!" He pulled away sharply. His hand fumbled with the door handle, and he just about tumbled out of the car, which Dean apparently had pulled over by the side of the road.

Dean swore, and Sam heard the driver's side door slam. As Sam was trying to get up, he appeared and bent over him. "Okay, what the _hell—_"

Sam shoved him hard and scrambled to his feet. "Stay away from me." The screams had died down a bit, but were still very much _there_. Screaming, sobbing, pleading…

"Augh…Dammit, Sam…" He rubbed the side of his head, which had slammed into the Impala's door where Sam had shoved him. "What was that for? You wanna tell me what's goin' on?"

Sam gritted his teeth against the screams. "Why'd you say that? Why the hell would you say that?" Was Dean possessed or something? Was that even _possible…_?

"Say _what_? Sam, I didn't say anything."

"What?" The screams cut off as abruptly as they'd began. Sam took a step backward, but stumbled, suddenly dizzy, and wound up flat on his ass.

"Sam!" Dean dropped down next to him. "Man, what the…What the hell's wrong with you?"

Sam blinked a few times, dazed. "That wasn't you?"

"Uh, no." Dean was staring at him as if he'd grown two extra heads.

"What happened?"

"You started mumblin' something about Jess, and then you just started screaming and I barely managed to stop the damn car before you threw yourself out the door."

"Oh…" Sam swayed and almost fell flat on his back, but Dean caught him and held his shoulders.

"So what's going on?"

Sam said nothing.

"You hearing voices, Sammy?" His voice was quiet. That was his _scared-shitless_-voice.

Sam hesitated. Was there any point in trying to lie to him after a little display like that? No, probably not. May as well opt for honesty.

Looking anywhere but Dean, he nodded. "You told me…you told me Jess was in Hell. And I heard her. She was screaming."

"Crap," he muttered. "Aw, Sam…"

"Wasn't you. I know it wasn't you." His entire body was shuddering, hard.

"Yeah, but…" he paused. "Was it _me _you heard in this voice-vision-thing? Or…" he trailed off.

"Michael, maybe," Sam said in a lifeless voice. "It'd make sense, wouldn't it? Sounding like you to screw with me…" And there it was again, that awful feeling he was right despite the lack of actual memory. He felt his eyes burning as he looked up at Dean. "It's not working, is it? The wall?"

"We don't know that. Sammy, we _don't_ know that." But the concern in his eyes conveyed in no uncertain terms that he agreed with Sam.

"But I'm remembering stuff…."

Dean sighed. "Look, Sam. They…hurt you, down there. Bad. And even without your memories, they still messed with _you_, and that's gotta have some shitty side effects. And this? This might just be your brain's way of dealin' with it. But you're stronger than this, I know you are. So yeah, it sucks, but it's nothing we can't handle. We'll figure it out, you and me, okay? 'S what we do, right? Figure shit out."

Sam nodded. He didn't know if he agreed with that or not, but regardless, it was exactly what he needed to hear right now. "Okay."

"Good." Dean helped haul him to his feet. "Come on. We'll get breakfast to go, how's that sound? You can even get one of those gay fruit-salad-in-a-cup things you like so much."

Sam smiled thinly and got back in the car.

Another two weeks and he was 100% positive that he didn't at all buy Dean's _you're-stronger-than-this _spiel. It was running him ragged, the loud, the migraines, and now _this_—the sound of people he loved, condemning him, their voices caustic in his ears and leaving behind so much damn _LOUD _that he'd be near catatonic for hours afterward. It was like the demon blood withdrawal but on steroids. But every time one of these attacks happened, Dean, and often Bobby as well, stayed right by him. Dean would always grab his hands and talk to him until the worst of it was over. He was grateful for that, even if it was ineffectual, because it gave him something to at least _try _to focus on.

All the time in between, he was listless and withdrawn, not sure what to do with himself and afraid he'd set the voices off if he tried to concentrate on anything too long. And 99% of the time, Dean was right there with him, like he promised.

Too bad that the moment he finally broke had to be that other 1% of the time.

He was in the kitchen, and of all stupid mundane things to be doing he was pouring himself a glass of juice, a task that Sam figured would be fast and safe enough to complete without Dean's presence.

Sam set the glass on the table, wincing as his head protested to even the _chink _of the glass against the wood. He was having a pretty bad day today, but then again, most days now were bad days.

He raised the glass and was about to drink, but he paused and looked into the cup. Huh. _Funny how much grape juice can look like blood, if you think about it._ How morbid of him, really.

_Loud…_

Ugh. God, not now.

But the loud refused to be ignored. And soon his mind, his ears, and ears were filled with a piercing screech that sounded like some sinister mockery of nails on a chalkboard.

He dropped the glass so he could shove his fingers into his ears, and it shattered on the table. But _that _sound just seemed to set off a chain reaction of _other _sounds. First one of his voices started shrieking at him—he couldn't tell for sure, but it sounded a little like Mom this time—and then another joined in, and then another. That was new, more than one at a time… And the effect was sickening. The noise seemed to cut and tear through his head, his chest, his _everything. _He didn't even know what the voices were saying this time, which was odd considering that they usually seemed to want him to hear every single word they had to say to him, nowadays. But _this_—this was more than he could take.

His knees buckled, and he threw his hands out to catch himself. A searing pain shot through them, and he realized he'd just packed the skin of both his palms full of glass shards. A little stunned, he raised his hands up to look at them. The screaming stopped abruptly.

This wasn't pretty. By the looks of it, he'd need stitches in both hands, and he couldn't take the glass out himself. He gave himself a second to catch his breath before yelling for Dean. Dean was going to freak out as it was; he didn't need to see Sam totally coming apart at the seams from a recent attack on top of it.

He watched as a few drops of blood rolled down his palm and dripped into the pool of grape juice on the table below, disappearing within it.

And then he threw up.

Blood. For some reason, he couldn't abide the sight of the blood. It made him see other things…_feel _other things. Things he desperately hoped he wasn't remembering from Hell.

_Cut…carved…mangled…strung up…skin from muscle, muscle from bone, marrow out of bone…Red. It was all red. And he could taste it. _

_Loud loud loud loud loud…_

The screams came back with a vengeance, now mingled with the phantom pain to create a hideous, merciless snare that was pulling him…pulling him through the wall.

Distantly he could hear himself screaming for Dean, for Bobby, for anybody, but the floodgates were open; there were no closing them.

It wasn't so much memories as it was images that assailed and bombarded him…images and sensations, neither of which he could hope to put into words, and all of which he realized were going to crush any sanity he had left.

Somewhere his brain registered that this was it—like Cas had said, once this happened, it was either _go crazy_ or _die_. There was no fixing him.

And yeah, he knew that—Death himself had said that there would be no other options for him now. But unbelievably, when he finally, finally saw Dean running into the kitchen and catching him as he pitched forward, the only thing Sam felt in that split second was relief.

Because somehow, in that last moment of consciousness, his heart had convinced him of what his brain knew to be impossible.

Dean was here. So somehow, they would fix this.

They always did.

*End*


End file.
